VA San Diego Healthcare System, 3350 La Jolla Village Drive, San Diego, CA, 92161, USA.
Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2022 Jun;22(3):542-556. doi: 10.3758/s13415-021-00975-w. Epub 2021 Dec 29.
Frustration is common in adolescence and often interferes with executive functioning, particularly reward-based decision-making, and yet very little is known about how incidental frustrating events (independent of task-based feedback) disrupt the neural circuitry of reward processing in this important age group. While undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 45 healthy adolescents played a card game in which they had to guess between two options to earn points, in low- and high-stake conditions. Functioning of button presses through which they made decisions was intermittently blocked, thereby increasing frustration potential. Neural deactivation of the precuneus, a Default Mode Network region, was observed during obstructed action blocks across stake conditions, but less so on high- relative to low-stake trials. Moreover, less deactivation in goal-directed reward processing regions (i.e., caudate), frontoparietal "task control" regions, and interoceptive processing regions (i.e., somatosensory cortex, thalamus) were observed on high-stake relative to low-stake trials. These findings are consistent with less disruption of goal-directed reward seeking during blocked action efficacy in high-stake conditions among healthy adolescents. These results provide a roadmap of neural systems critical to the processing of frustrating events during reward-based decision-making in youths and could help to characterize how frustration regulation is altered in a range of pediatric psychopathologies.
挫折在青少年中很常见，常常干扰执行功能，尤其是基于奖励的决策，但对于偶然的挫折事件（与任务反馈无关）如何破坏这一年龄组奖励处理的神经回路，我们知之甚少。在进行功能磁共振成像 (fMRI) 时，45 名健康青少年玩了一个纸牌游戏，他们必须在两个选项之间猜测以赚取积分，分为低风险和高风险两种情况。通过按钮做出决策的功能会间歇性地被阻断，从而增加挫折感的可能性。在高风险和低风险条件下，观察到在受阻动作块中，默认模式网络区域的楔前叶出现神经去激活现象，但在高风险条件下，相对于低风险条件，去激活现象较少。此外，在高风险条件下，与低风险条件相比，目标导向的奖励处理区域（即尾状核）、额顶叶“任务控制”区域和内脏感觉处理区域（即躯体感觉皮层、丘脑）的去激活现象较少。这些发现与在健康青少年中，高风险条件下受阻动作功效期间，目标导向的奖励寻求受到的干扰较小一致。这些结果提供了一条神经通路的路线图，对于理解青少年在基于奖励的决策中处理挫折事件至关重要，并且可以帮助描述在一系列儿科精神病理学中，挫折调节是如何改变的。
